Defamation

Defamation Law is the law governing the protection and vindication of citizens’ reputations. The area has been greatly altered by very recent legislation with the removal of the old split between slander (being a spoken, transient wrongful statement damaging to a person’s reputation) and libel (being the publication or wider broadcast of a wrongful statement damaging to a person’s reputation). The significant awards- and commensurately significant risks- in Defamation cases make them a particularly high profile form of litigation. However, the issue of Defamation law is frequently bound up in issues of freedom of speech and the balancing of society’s rights to discuss matters of importance with the individual’s rights to vindicate their personal good name. The posts in these categories explore these competing aims as they apply both to principles and individual cases.

For this reason a court has to be very careful in making orders ex parte. The absolute necessity for the making of the order without notification to the respondent must be shown. Considerable damage may be inflicted on the respondent, unfairly, by an order restraining the respondent from acting in some matter or fashion.

As part of their reply, in rejecting the criticism, they refer to the absolute privilege they were entitled to if they had chosen to make their disclosures in the Dail. They make the point they did not avail of this (on the basis that it might have been an abuse of the privilege).